Guglielmo Bertone is an unusual character compared with the miserable, cowardly types that Sordi portrayed in comedies of the Sixties. He is brilliant and determined, with an extraordinary education and despite a horribly pronounced overbite he makes progress in the selection for a newsreader at Rai, the national broadcasting company, ousting most of the highly recommended candidates and dodging every attempt by the board to eliminate him. The episode celebrates television as a new mass mythology and was made with the aim of uncovering the production system and the most well-known faces of the time (from Nanni Loy to the Kessler twins, from professor Cutolo to Lelio Luttazzi). The narration is based on an ironic twist: the ‘complessi’ (complexes) are not Guglielmo’s, who is apparently unaware of his own considerable physical defect, but instead they belong to those who make the selection, who are not able in any way to overcome his “diabolical guile”.

Alice Autelitano